UK: First Batch of 3000 Frozen Embryos - Destroyed

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 13:55:53 +0000

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(1 Aug 1996) English/Nat

The first of more than 3-thousand frozen embryos have been destroyed in Britain.

The dot-sized embryos had to be disposed of under a British law that limits the storage of in vitro fertilised eggs to five years.

There have been wide-spread protests from anti-abortion groups and fertility clinics who claim the law has not given clinics long enough to contact couples who have embryos in storage.

This laboratory in Harley Street in west London destroyed 200 frozen embryos earlier Thursday.

It was one of 32 laboratories around the country to do so under a law that says unclaimed embryos, used for fertility treatment, must be destroyed after five years unless the donors agree to extend storage by another 5 years.

The dot-sized embryos, some four cells and some just a single, undivided cell, were produced by infertile couples who needed more than one chance to give birth. And, in most cases, were not needed.

Their destruction took only a few minutes. They were removed from freezing nitrogen into a saline solution -- and then incinerated.

Pro-life campaigners have been outraged by the destruction. They appealed in vain yesterday to the British Prime Minister for a stay of execution.

Professor Ian Craft of the London Gynaecological and Fertility Centre is opposed to the law -- he believes the five year rule was applied arbitrarily and that embryos can survive for several decades.

These are some of the thawed embryos under the microscope -- in reality, they are invisible to the human eye.

SOUNDBITE:
That's the profoundness of this situation, the profundity is that here are lovely embryos that could have been used but because of a decree made by others without any flexibility they can't be used. They could have been potential children, they won't any longer.
SUPER CAPTION: Professor Ian Craft, London Gynaecology and Fertility Centre

The embryos have spent the last five years in liquid nitrogen canisters at a temperature of minus one hundred and ninety six degrees centigrade.

Around 10-thousand are stored at this clinic, Bourn Hall in Cambridgeshire -- the largest in vitro fertilisation clinic in the country.

Of that number, nine hundred embryos whose five year span is up are currently unaccounted for.

Professor Craft says the five year rule should never have been written in law.

SOUNDBITE:
At the end of the day I don't think the Department of Health's full time medical advisers have taken proper consultation with fertility and scientific specialists a about the risks of storing and b about the wisdom of putting it in statute law. In essence what they did was to put storage into the law rather than into guidelines of a code of practice which controls our fertility treatment and secondly they put a ridiculously short time of five years in.
SUPER CAPTION: Professor Ian Craft, fertility specialist at the London Gynaecology and Fertility Centre

The Department of Health, however, refused to comment.

A major concern has been the failure to get hold of some couples -- who had moved house several times, or left the country.

At some of the 32 fertility clinics, employees were checking faxes this morning for any late claims by donor couples.

SOUNDBITE:
Just one more year and that would have allowed us possibly to get a few more back who still want their embryos, somebody phoned yesterday, somebody wrote in who needed eight embryos on Monday, somebody wrote last Friday. Somebody writing this Friday? Sorry. So I think it's been too restrictive and the decisions to change it were too late.

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